The Cape (Flip) Cod (Flop) Times on Jan. 13 wrote an editorial supporting the health care bill with a headline imploring “Don’t let it die” and underscored the bill’s importance as a “…ground-breaking starting point for universal coverage” and urged that “Congress should move forward without delay.”

Three days later, on Jan. 16, the newspaper’s priorities wheeled a 180 and it endorsed Republican Scott Brown to fill Ted Kennedy’s seat. Brown is against the health bill. His election would in all likelihood torpedo passage of a health-care package and thus destroy what Kennedy hoped would be his legacy and a modest start to stabilized health care costs.

From this corner, it looks like the GOP (Great Obstructionist Party), aided and abetted by moneyed lobbies, turned somebody’s head around. The newspaper can’t have it both ways. The flip-flop merely confused readers whose Blue Cross HMO premiums rose $50 this year and who depend on editorials for guidance.

That’s a criticism.

Now on to something that wasn’t a criticism.

Veteran Town Manager (and publisher) John Klimm wrote last week in his newsletter that “a Patriot writer criticized” his expanding municipal media empire of multiple TV shows, print and on-line newsletters as though the writer should be ostracized. So now, in deference to historical precedence, I’m standing next to a cherry tree with an ax in my hand, having to set the record straight on behalf of my blameless colleagues.

I cannot tell a lie. It surely was I.

Having thus confessed and with trembling hand sealed my indictment, I am obliged to right the cart of misinterpretation. The general tone of what was writ was parody, not criticism. Thin-skinned politician/bureaucrats in a fit sometimes struggle to distinguish between the two, particularly if they try to digest the written word before morning coffee, bouncing it off their cronies or purging the cranial fog of a late night.

For the record, the offending piece, quite plainly, took to task neither the town manager and his acolytes nor the public relations harvest produced under municipal auspices. To the contrary, it soundly censured the majority of town voters in general for ignoring the products (as they do the polls) and the information contained in them, some of it self-aggrandizing fluff, some of it summaries of meetings and the like, and some of it news you can use, such as when you can resume walking your mutt on the beach for a deposit, or when a street will be closed for repairs and which clam bed is open for harvest. Good basic information.

The article was supported by statistics, not criticisms, culled from the town’s own independent citizens’ survey that placed the novice municipal media offerings in the information basement and the time-ripened Cape Cod Times and Barnstable Patriot up on the roof.

The column was peppered with admonitions, not of Klimm, not of his publications, but citizen apathy, to wit: “Given the dismal voter turnout in municipal elections, it isn’t surprising citizens who nonetheless say they are thirsty for information can’t be bothered to read or listen to the voluminous and often complex, boring and/or biased details of municipal operations,” and “…But when the electorate refuses to vote, and when the public ignores government information outlets, then who really is the culprit here?”

The column made reference to the process of preparing news releases using town employee time at taxpayer expense, not a criticism, but a reality detail that dashes any notion the newsletters are “free.” Additionally, TV broadcasts with paid performers aren’t free either, but supported by television consumers as a boob-tube excise tax.

All this is not to say the municipal media blitz is exempt from criticism. These types of in-house publications gone public serve a limited purpose by presenting unquestionable optimism, warranted or not, and leaving the sordid, underhanded stuff and hard questions to the mainstream media – which solemnly takes that task to heart.

In brief, these corporate-type news outlets separate the wheat from the chaff and print the chaff.

Like the Cape Cod Times and all other news sources, the municipal media is not exempt from criticism, parody, disagreement or ridicule. And any time a town manager wants “criticism,” the media will usually oblige.